Rockette

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: The Augmented Reality Center - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University, Dundas Island}

Dance Monkey #4.059: dance macabre.

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_{Interaction(s): gil. - @Roman}

Previously: burgundy.

Through the crowd, she had ventured, lost to the time and sway of light and music as she observed, gazed, studied, and wore a delicate smile wreathed with intent and purpose, a secret baited on sweet breath, a vixen-esque facade afforded for the evening and carefully molded into place. That pale face oft heralded with swathes of pain and rage as the forsaken beast lulled into something more before delicate whispers rose and fell on her ears as webbed temptations to stir her ire. Her name was harshly uttered, her likeness described coming from the Lynx House, another whispering tale of the Trials, of her guarded room in the infirmary. Of a forest rendezvous and a curiously destroyed tent.

Someone had seen her pick her way down the cliffs that night.

What did she do? What had she done? And the eternal inquiry that marred her shadow for an entire year: why was she here?

Blackjack may have slowly begun to trust her (though, doubtful, for there was no mistaking the utterance of Tiamat in the Trials and specific individuals that would likely never refer to her as comrade or friend), but did that stabilize foundations for the entire campus to forgive and forget where she had come from? Perhaps not the only Foundation transfer, but the most infamous in every path she carved with waves of scarlet power at her beck and call. A sower and reaper of destruction shrouded in mystery as a cowl of demented forgeries in the name of her mother, her father, and Jonas.

She breathed—sharp, quick—and felt her power stir, liken as a serpentine creature bound to flesh and the cage of bone therein. Those vipers hissed to life in wreathes of black shadow and weighted over her shoulders as three, a manifested trio with eyes of blue that lashed forked tongues at her quickening pulse as more whispers crested as waves frothed and raging and crashing against the banked edges of her fortified will that shored as obsidian walls inlaid with red.

The music cycles from one genre to the next, requests made, some adhered to, some not, ignored for the already predetermined programming to keep them committed to a time that fell back to the immersion of pinnacle socialization and finance. Deep bass vibrated throughout, felt down to the marrow, whilst harmonizing pitches of brass instruments rose and fell, a cadence that inspired many attempts to keep in time with the rapid beat that permeated each melody as it was given. Bodies enmeshed and arms entwined, a wedding of flesh and heat that helplessly raked through the space barely left for naught between couples and groups that amalgamated on the dance floor: awkward pairs, friends in some, one that dipped a girl low in the brightest of garish pinks that clung to every crevice of her body, bodice adorned in glittering sequins. Another of two women that spun out and into one another, a dress of white and one of silver in reflecting silk and chiffon lace that coiled down slender arms locked into an embrace. Little ceremony spared for the blissfully unaware couple lost to the shadowed corner where a crimson drape hung precariously over the heated swagger of lips and tongues, curiously compared to the laughter flung out far and wide from those encouraged by the interchanging music, still beside their claimed tables.

And then it tapers off into the quaint allure of a slow melody, twinkling chimes, and violin strings that lament love and loss and heartache, the romantics that sway under dimmed lighting burning hot as globes that flickered to amber fluorescence that painted everyone and everything in golden lamplight. Her embellishment turned dark and luring; resplendent hues palmed over waxen skin and the silk of her dress rippling with every sway; a void, the obsidian likeness that plumed through the crowd as a raven’s wing, feathers of the gloom in every step as she meandered, at ease and alone.

Amma had sought peace at the brass railing once more, gazing from up high, sipping delicately on red wine that she swirled through the seat of her glass once and then twice; legs of burgundy clung to the curve of translucence before she drained it down to the last drop. A pleasant sensation of warmth took residence through her limbs, whorls of heat that swept low in her belly as she breathed in and out, a soft sigh over the pout of her lip as she raked a delicate hand through her mane of hair and absently strolled back to the bar to order another, the bottle already procured and poured graciously with a smile as her currency of gratitude that left the student stumbling and mute, mouth agape— the Queen of Darkness, as some muttered, was not entirely without charm. Or, better yet, another coined moniker from the rather ardent Cassander (oh yes, she heard him once before; such an abrasive figure, a chaffing and relentless man that bore fang and claw in primitive stature.) Elvira, she thinks he once alluded to her as, and perches her full mouth on her glass and drinks, welcoming the tannins on her tongue. Acid pools away through her mouth before plummeting to the incredible ease she feels spooling through nerves and blood, limbs graciously relaxed before emptiness churns away at her stomach, waiting to be plied with food rather than drink. Butler passed hors d'oeuvres consisting of minor delicacies of seafood and non; cheeses garnished with basil, tomatoes on top of a toasted bread someone named a crostini, quaint tartlets with mushrooms, and some sweet treats cupped in flaky pastry bread called filo and topped with mint that she popped past painted lips, tasting berries and dolloped cream.

The whispers followed her there, too, poised and held aloft as whips she decided to smother with another pull of her drink. Her gaze flickered over the rim of her glass and compelled her audience to quiet and hush, trading their whispers with another name she knew well, some gesturing off-handedly as a familiar sensation washed over her. When someone approached her, the circumference she commanded writhed with it, the world and serpents adorned with her prowess arising to the silent challenge thrown there, so few that dared to brave the sphere of influence adhered to her form. Lids panned low, and lashes fanned against her cheeks as she leaned back, her spine against the railing and her leg bent, her sharp heel rising against the swell of her calf before it snapped back down with a flicker of red.

It was the same man from before, with a smile that betrayed the wealth of his eyes, which matched the grey of his suit in tones of monochromatic refinement. He stopped, a relatively meager crowd at his back as if lambs were being led to the slaughter.

“So it’s true then, you did sleep with Gil last night.”

Amma laughed, drank, and mulled an answer with a long draw of silence.

“...So, what they say about Lorcán and you must be true then—left a teammate to do all the work while you and he ran off together in the woods.”

“And, what’s it to any of you?”

“I’m just saying that a lot of things changed when you showed up. People talk, you know, see things. Hear things. Some of my friends left when your Foundation showed up–here for just a year-- and then they came knocking on the door, and now you’re sneaking around the dorms.”

Amma scoffed, eyes cast away, disinterested as she tipped her head back, her neck on display, and the name etched in her flesh stretched taut, emphasizing the harsh lines marked to her throat as a brand of memorabilia. Eyes traced black lines and more, marking the ‘I,’ the ‘M,’ and then the secondary ‘M’ inked there, curling over the fourth letter as her throat bobbed with enticing finesse. She nearly drained the rest of her drink before she passed it off to him and smiled, teeth perched on the pout of her lip darkened by the wine she imbibed; her tongue passed over, dipping to the corner of her mouth before she said with a voice fringed in biting tones that lanced betwixt them on tendrils of scarlet infamy:

“Your barking exhausts me. Hold this for me, yeah?”

She descends from the mezzanine with a hand brushing through glossy midnight tresses, a subtle perfume left at the sharp rap of her heels—reminded then of how people saw her.

She tells herself, as she always has, that she does not care.
She tells herself that over and over and over again.

On the dance floor, she hears raised voices, privy to the commotion by the immediate recognition that follows with her eyes drawn to baby blues and golden spun hair – and she saw everything. While Cassander was all deliberate aggression and wanton rage, Lorcán was not, a balm of sorts that maybe one would assume to his rather vehement cousin, but Amma curiously wondered why he held back. Why another rose as a champion to defend Aurora’s honor, and whilst she could very well hold her own (she had stood up to her, after all, her previous warning aside), it was still a peculiar notion to contemplate as she observed, watching the pair before they winked entirely out of existence.

And that was that.

The music resumed with ceremonial glamor, edging into a rather soothing comparison to what had just occurred, inspiring a twirling sensation through her spine. However, even such melodies could not snuff out the whispers that, too, followed her here. Soft mutterings of Blackjack’s disreputable distinction: of course, it’s something about them; it wouldn’t be an event without something happening with Jim’s favored team leading the scandal. Amma glided across the dance floor at that, a path that parted mindlessly around her, a barrier created as the plucking strings of bass swept through her, quickly accompanied by the electric droning of a guitar that she stepped in time with, eyes drawing entirely over dancing pairs, searching through the crowd that rushed to resume their swaying twirls and shuffling steps.

That’s when she finally found Gil, a plate in one hand and a drink in the other, and there she stood, eyes fixated on the spot he claimed, his stare peering through the crowd, presumably in search of their teammates. Amma only spared him a flickering glare, the blue of her eyes sparkling under dimmed bulbs, words spoken earlier igniting through the swell of her thoughts that sweltered under the vibrating timbre that suddenly commanded the space betwixt her ears. With the droning words came a swirling cape of scarlet that fled down the length of her body, seductive amplifications of her powers unbidden that slid down the skirts of her dress and onto the dance floor, firing to life as a blooming cosmos of the world that was held upon the mercy of her passionate desires. She stepped back and forward; every move instantly met with a pulse of power that skittered along the velvet lines of her heels. Edged in donning lights of silver, those summoned wisps vibrated and wreathed through her gestures as Amma spun, finding a random person to clutch, a hand that pulled her back, and a body that shimmered with obsidian shadows the more her power fixated onto the toiling HZEs felt through every breath she took.

Within and without.

Her powers swirled entirely through those around her, playful and mindless crimson plumes that rose and fell, some igniting above and showering the dance floor in glittering sparks of interchanging ruby hues that plummeted as falling stars. All the while, she felt an inevitable pull to the edge of the dance floor as she danced, a devastating illustration that was Amma Cahors and the magnetism she commanded, set beside the fear of the unknown that was she. A darling smile adorned her face, one body and onto the next that she danced with, compelled by a song felt and seen and heard through every daring twirl and dip of her body, flashes of tattoos and ink lined in skittering coils of red to emphasize the netherworld marked onto her.

And then, finally, she came to the edge, spun out as a whorl of black and white with a smattering of gold, her heel snapping dangerously close to where Gil stood, finalized by the twirl of red and silver along her legs. Her breath came quick, heated, and exhilarated, fanning softly from her full lips until she plucked at the white pinned to her dress, glancing down and then up, studying the purple suit he had selected for the night and was drawn closer; the delicate flowers in her hand suddenly ignited by the red wealth of her powers.

“Hey there, casanova.” She breathes. "I'd ask you for a dance, but looks like you have your hands full."

There and then not, Amma’s remaining smile the only offer as she was tugged back immediately onto the dance floor, a line of red instantly squirming its way through the bodies that closed Gil off to her piercing stare, drawn to the place he stood before it suddenly vanished on a wisp of red, shaped curiously like a petal, and fell with the chiming bell of her laughter.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: The Augmented Reality Center - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University, Dundas Island}

Dance Monkey #4.051: burgundy.

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_{Interaction(s): -}

Previously: i looked the future in the eyes, it's mine.

With Lorcán’s departure, Amma followed after him with her eyes, watching then as he approached Aurora, the following conversation muted to her ears with the music thrumming up and over her, creating a subtle vibration through her gestures as she peered through her lashes and swept her gaze elsewhere. They’d figure it out, one way or another, if such were meant to be through the destinies of the world and the hearts woven through the fabric of fantastical reality. If maybe their souls were bound, or perhaps something more substantial flitted through those damned strings that too wove through hands scarred through the lines of fate nestled within her palms. Amma wonders then how her mother felt, for memory served of sad eyes and smiles of blue, a blue that reminded her of her own impression but sparkling with life – a hue of christening innocence she found in Aurora’s gaze. A tone of azure in Katja’s uncertainty and heartache, a darkened shade of steel, and a lost glimmer in Gil’s gaze that sheered through her barriers and burned for all the woe he witnessed in her and for the mistrust and anger banked hard into Rory’s glare whenever he looked at her—a lost and forlorn knight in regret for not slaying the dragon.

Or would those threads weave Lorcán back to her side, where a label clung precariously to an established edge of friendship, a similar fixation that Amma had given to the likes of Katja and Haven, each rung of familiarity classified with mutual understanding, one held on a promise and another held on pain and rage, for that faceless unknown that cantered through her nightmares on heated words of damnation and redemption. Darling names and classifications of an imperfect reality, where the dreary and ragged cape of her waking world was nailed as a flimsy barrier against the machinations of her many names. The one here, though (Amma, she tells herself, no whisper of Tiamat through her mind, and no hastily stricken name that compounded her with fear for the power lain within), she admired the tables, their centerpieces of fluttering white feathers, the deeply jeweled red of their runners and ran black nails against gold speckled curtains before she palmed glistening and polished brass and ascended towards the mezzanine with the whisper of silk at her back. Where did Gil mesh with all those threads? She pondered: no label to mark, no claim to stake, just a delicate pin of tiny white flowers that she plucked at, head tilted in distraction before she dropped her hand and twirled a lock of black hair.

From up high, Amma could see all, and it was a peculiar sensation to be as she was, who she was, looking down onto the students of P.R.C.U, to be one of them and yet not, no matter how often Jim stated otherwise to her peculiar enrollment. With the letters now revealing Jonas’ knowledge of her, the things seen (what was coming, she had to ponder on, what did he see but could not tell those closest to him) and her father too, both characters vying for that power and potential unspooling from her flesh and bound to the thrum of energy that coated every living thing. To be manipulated, to be destroyed, to be created as something entirely new and unthought. A clipped nail of black pressed down into the brass railing where a crackling thread of scarlet bloomed and wrought through the alloy and then down before her eyes widened, immediately severing the link of ruination before it spread further. So easily undone but carefully contained, or was it? Could it be her placated emotions and the heat of alcohol through her that tempered those ambient HZEs that hearkened to her influence, or was it something within, something not easily explained, that sluiced beneath pallid skin and lighted blue eyes with the power of command and allurement in every step she took? The letters answered nothing, but perhaps it settled something therein to know that maybe someone saw her, saw her for all that she had done and would do, and tried to stop it from happening.

To be seen was to be heard, even if her screams sheared betwixt heart and soul and never left her aching lungs. Even if her life could have been different, was it worth lamenting over when the path of vengeance wavered before her as a mountainous climb adorned in the pits of a netherworld unseen?

Amma inhaled, soft breath churned out in a sigh before she turned and approached the bar where the student standing behind the makeshift well tensed and met her eyes with flickering unease.

Ah, yes, there it is.

“What can I…”

“Red wine, if you have it. Cab, or a Pinot.”

He held up a bottle, the label undiscernible, and she waved her hand with a slight smile. She didn’t expect much, but the idea of partaking in more liquor didn’t sit well with what she had already indulged in. Delicate fingers curled over the stem, her wrist rotating to churn the rather heavy pour of a burgundy liquid that gave sweet notes of fermented berries and chocolate that she sipped on; her eyes fell back to the railing as the projected band easily swept into another song and the student body with it. She hummed softly, lured by notes that fell betwixt her ears, a note that delicately wed to the purring graces of her cadence, lips parted around another sip of her drink, her gaze flickering to and fro, back and then forth, constantly shifting as she studied the dance floor and felt the draw to intermingle with those gathered there. There was no obligation or promise that withheld her at the spot she claimed on the railing, one hand delicately perched whilst the other curled fingers against the globe of her glass and held it so. Would it matter if she danced with others? What stalled her steps and had her deny those earlier who had inquired? What was she waiting for?

Who.

A subtle whisper proclaimed as a minute voice within that inspired a soft laugh and a dimming of her eyes, peering over the rim of her glass as she took another drink and ran her tongue over the pout of her lip at the droplet lingering there.

With a concealed smirk and a cunning spark that lighted her eyes, Amma left her spot at the railing and once more dipped into the crowd around the bar, disappearing entirely from sight.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: The Augmented Reality Center - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University, Dundas Island}

Dance Monkey #4.046: i looked the future in the eyes, it's mine.

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_{Interaction(s): -}

Previously: between shadows and light.

The world was often beholden to the impression and influence that was Amma Cahors.

It melded into a massive construct of red, donned in touches of silver and banked with deep obsidian that gleamed with ashen remains; it swelled therein with potential, need, and a yearning for omnipotence. An almighty being that raged with appetence, hunger, a void that demanded to be sated, a glutton for the sweltering energy that permeated the air with every sharp rap of her heels onto the pavement, every swish of silk with a trailing skirt that fanned around the golden sheen of her thighs; a cape of shadow, of night eternal, woven through with a smattering of promise and intention. Alone but all-encompassing in every swagger, a near march into a field of unknown where the moon fell upon her, mocked her in all that resplendent silver, highlighted those scars, and delicately flashed at the white pinned temporarily to her dress until she would pin it onto another. There was a particular whorl of energy that linked through her gestures, herself so in tune with the wiles of the world that suspended itself from the emotional coil that flexed betwixt flesh and bone, spun through in leagues of damning red that sluggishly crawled over her skin, down her legs, sparking to life with each step made.

Amma had stopped by her dorm one final time to drop off her things; the letters were still left there, her old uniform haunting the space on her bed, and the usual grace of her room malformed by the lingering emotes of anguish represented in the shattered tiles and scarlet lances. Another time, though, to acknowledge the disparity of her past and the lies it was built of, she would find her answers eventually (the fog of her memories be damned), but the night had beckoned, and so she had taken the letters, her uniform next, and hid them away.

What was and had been and thus came to be: a concept of circumstance that may have taken life away from her, but she would take it back without forgiveness and without regret. And it started here.

The Alexandria Foundation had its dances, of course. Stories she had heard about with many nights of revelry that celebrated assorted achievements of impending graduation that she had not been privy to. As she admitted to the girls, it was all lost upon her, for she had been taken, locked, down into the dark often during these times, more so in the last few years (what she can remember); jollification traded for sheering agony and screams for the hated prick of burning liquid that fled through veins. The oozing black that fell from eyes of glowing blue, the tears of hate and blood and death she wore as a child, a teenager, an adult.

Just a girl.

Throngs of seniors led the way to the A.R.C, some paired, some in groups, a few that lingered there with familiar glances that fled her way almost instantly, each panning eye that swept over her embellished physique for all she revealed, and she relished in it. Amma smiled, a slumberous and vulpine simper that broke across her usual glaring facade, a carefully softened curl of her full lips that she had added to with a final swipe of rouge onto her pout. She blended it out into a soft bloom of a rose-like color, the warmth of the ruby undertones taken to her usual pale lip color, just that final touch she needed. Here, she was more than the terrifying transfer student, more than the brutally angry representative of wrath, and more than the in-between and the unknown. She was Amma. Her name that is not her name scoured through the night, ruthless in abandon, a fixation onto the minds of others as she carved that path through the glow of the night.

A senior from Myotis stopped her and asked her if she had a date. Amma denied it– claimed she didn’t need one.
Another senior from Gulo paused to ask her for a dance later. She laughed.
Another from the house of Lynx claimed to have seen her the previous night and bravely asked her to save him a spot on the dancefloor. Amma smiled and simply said, “It’s not your room I was in last night, was it?”

Was it the subtle seduction of an evening of promise that found courage through the gatherings of people here, a myriad of colors before her eyes as she wove herself into the student body with relative ease. A contortionist aptitude that allowed her lithe figure to sweep through as admiration dawned upon her glances at the bold decor with those daring reds, darling golds, and contrasting blacks; looking further in was a herald back to a time of rapid fashion, the ornamentation a uniqueness she appreciated even if such could be likened to a near gaudy affair. Amma marked the velvet rope and stanchions that made up the entryway, complete with a red carpet; was this what it meant for the glamorous of Hollywood? She glanced over her shoulder; the exaggeration and elaborateness swept up many. Noted by the height of their laughter, eagerness compounded through their steps whilst she lingered there, scanning the crowd perhaps though she would deny the flutter of her lashes as she studied the space around her.

Amma subtly ran her fingers through her mane of hair, shaking the waves back and exposing her slender shoulders. She was prepared to enter the A.R.C. alone if not for the familiar voice that suddenly called to her, causing her to turn and offer her profile for the interesting eyes that trailed down her figure.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: Gulo Dorms - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University.}

Dance Monkey #4.034: hostage.

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_{Interaction(s): -}

Previously: atlantic.

Dear Ms. Cahors,

You don’t know me, but I know you, and I know of your daughter. I have seen what the world has done to her and I have seen the countless lives she will touch.

There is a tale Amma often thought of, not just of the forsaken soul cast away from on high that sought the love of life lost and forsaken, but rather a unique telling that artfully depicted the herald of a crown, sword, scales, and a bow. A chalice too that tipped over and spilled forth torrents of blood and from the depths of conspired life, the manifest of many heads and serpentine necks writhing through the flames of both crimson and silver, edged out into the void as blue eyes attached to the many faces of a beast gazed upon her from yonder the obsidian that rose on the foundations of her bones. There are cracks through the forsaken gloom, wed to the discrepancies gorged upon her heart, her soul of souls malformed and misshapen. Pieces of herself suddenly lost, given to others, tendrils of scarlet thread that looped through her trembling fingers as lines that fled off into the distance unknown and bound Amma to obligated miseries and connections she would’ve rather seen burned once upon a time.

Ashes to ashes.

The terrible power she will come to bear is the likeness that no child should ever have to endure. Though not her fault, it will slowly destroy her.

She feels as if she is missing something. Something, or someone, that had taken away a fragment of self from things she cannot begin to understand: the chalice now tipped over, the remnants of a person lost within and without. The coils of her powers then sputter and crackle, lightning fragments summoned and a face like her own looming forth and wrought with terrible laughter. It is her face, but then not; it is a shadow - an Apparition - that leeches upon the display of scarlet miasma that feathers from her parted lips on a shaky exhale. Fogging through the shower's steam, Amma slowly succumbs to her knees as water pelts and pounds over her supple shoulders. Heat sluices through her entire body; it runs rampant through her veins in fiendish lines of hate and despair, the laughter slowly spinning and pinpointing to a ringing cruelty that shatters betwixt her ears and cradles her head within her palms.

We can help her. I can help her. There are ways to curb and mentor her abilities, ways that we can take what I know it is you fear and guide her to peace.
For I know what happened at the church.

Heavy is the head that wears the crown, heavy is the heart that beholds the scepter, or would she better yet dub it the sword, and heavy is the hand that reaps, pillages, and destroys. The scales are tipped all to one side, plummeted to the edge of her heart, and the bow is pulled taut, like her spine, curving inward until it sings and snaps, and there it unleashes spindles of black in the form of her memories that pulse in tandem with her erratic heart. Eclipses of a child screaming to the stars above and lost at sea, a girl barely in her teen years who smiles with others gathered around her –

She had friends once, she thinks. Their faces blurred into monochromatic discrepancies, shadowed profiles of those who had gone missing over the years, people she knew once but whose names she could not remember.

“What is happening to me?” Amma whispers to the tiles of her shower, only for the rising steam to answer; the hissing water drenches over her scars, the deepest ones on her back emblazoned anew, parts of her skin and body that she cannot feel sometimes, parts of her that twitch and ache and pulse every time she uses her powers. The world is quiet, silent.

They will come for her, but you mustn’t allow them to take her. There are many things at work that they cannot stop; they don’t know what is coming.

The world is afraid.
Afraid of her - terrified for her.

“Why can’t I remember?” She blames the shower, she blames the heat, and she blames everything else as Amma struggles to contain the rage within. She wants to wail for a life lost and a love she could have had; she wants to scream for the lives she has taken and only the few she has spared; she gasps and wheezes for the role she has to play.

But I do. There’s only so much I can say, and even then, I should not be writing this letter, but I cannot bear the truths and lies I have seen lain bare in your daughter’s life.

She cries now because she is positively incensed and can do nothing about it.

The morning and the calm and peace she had found there suddenly seemed so far away.
And it is his face she sees as she closes her eyes on the last of her tears.

Mend. Instead of sunder.

Amma tips her face up to the shower and allows the heated water to spell away her sorrows, a baptism of fire as she cranks up the heat and steam blooms and rises like smoke where fragmented lines of black rise with whipping tendrils of red, each line snaked across the tiles as vengeful serpents as everything around her splinters, cracks, and shatters. Ashen remains dotted upon her fanning lashes, a glowing haze of red that descended upon her cheeks from the shimmering depths of hellfire captured within her gaze. Her power writhes down her body, through her scar over the betrayal of her devastated heart, wisps of posturing crimson malice that fall over her breasts, down her torso, slide throughout her curves, and highlight every single scar that Amma has ever suffered in life — too many to count, too many to place.

I implore you to allow her to attend Pacific Royal Collegiate & University, a safe place for her and even for you, if you wish. I promise I will not allow anything bad to happen to her.

With aching slowness, she braces her palms against the broken tile and stands to her full height. The weight of her hair dripped over her bunched shoulders, and the ringing betwixt her ears challenged the noise of the sputtering shower head as she carefully turned the water off and breaths around the sensitivity of her skin flushed pink. Amma moves with a sluggishness that betrays her usual grace, slumberous gestures that fumble through the heated air and snag against a towel before she drags it over her figure, down over her thighs, and back up her curves whilst her mind spirals with the disparity of answers being cruelly denied to her. If anything, she now only had more questions that reaffirmed the eternal inquiry she had for her mother: why?

A question that she also had for her father.

If the second letter was indeed from him, she had to wonder if he too was aware of what she had endured in the darkest recesses of The Foundation. If he and her mother had willingly subjected her to those tortures, Amma was uncertain of what she would do if she had found them, for the sense of betrayal that twisted her features into a reflection of anguish was a weight almost too great to bear. Above all, though, it made her angry; it took her pain and spun it into a likeness of war, rage, a tumultuous fury that shook through her arms as she regarded the harbinger reflected with nearly blood-shot eyes. And why strike out his name? Another secret, another unknown to pile on top of all the things she could not remember, like a pile of bleached bones picked clean and surrounded by great winged creatures of malformed vipers and vultures beset with eyes of blue and red and wreathed in silver.

Would any of it matter, though? Did any of it matter for the role she had to play, the script she adhered to, the tune she succumbed to, and the voices in her head as lines fed to her? Was allowing the past unknown really how she wanted to live her life? Is it irony coated on her tongue as Gil’s words and admissions attach themselves to her circumstances? Did he see something that she could not? Did Haven and Rory? Katja? Lorcán? Aurora and perhaps Sierra too? What did Harper see, with those eyes of hers? Or was that wishful thinking, to assume another could look yonder their own twisted demons and burdens of life, a similar reproach to herself as there was little beyond the obsidian wall that shored itself around her heart with looming chasms and bridges that others stood across from; seeking, yearning, hoping to breach that stalwart conviction that wavered with the dissipating heat of her shower.

Amma stepped back, palms caressing over her abdomen, a long mirror situated off the side that allowed her to study her profile and every stark, raised line of ink she commissioned to reclaim ownership of her body. Every piece was a story inlaid with sorrows, the peculiar and intricate knots over her shoulders where hands had gripped, shoved, and bit. Further down the planes of her slender back, where abstract coils splintered off from her spine and dipped into the horrid scars courtesy of the many times she had been flayed open, her powers erratic and screeching for the abysmal agony that had stolen time and reason from her. She could scarcely remember some of them, along with the peculiar and elongated scars that donned her thighs that she carefully traced over with similarly scarred fingers. Circular ones too that dotted her arms, her hips, and slender, jagged edges over her ribs; she had implored various artists to mark her body, and had seethed at the idea of more needles in her skin, but there was a resurrection found within the deeply seeded ink. Finally, she stilled, fingers curled over her chest, studying the latest scar that bisected the moth usually spread aloft there, horridly marked and split, the curvature of the wound slanted up over her heart; a perfect line, courtesy of abilities that mirrored her own, a figment of pure chaos that pulsated with the truth unknown.

There was only one place on her body that had never been marked: the back of her neck to where, even now, she ghosted fingers towards her nape and stilled. A spear of dread sheered through her limb, and she immediately dropped her hand, palming it over the shudder that flitted away through her other arm. There she stood, studying the paleness of her complexion and the stark netherworld of black lines she proudly displayed, scars and all. The dress she had chosen would reveal these haunts, and that revelation bid Amma to study herself with more critical attention than before. The world would tremble in her wake of rage and anger for the answers denied to her; she would scour the world as a beast bitterly owed the destruction and revenge indebted to her. For she was struck with vanity, hubris, and a glutton for the insatiable wants of life, she knows all this and does not care; the sins of humanity sparing little to her revere. Amma took what she wanted in retribution for the brutality of fate and destiny that took everything from her. Seductive coils of red rose through the barriers of the world, HZEs pulsating in flashes of silver through her entire room, thirty-three feet of pure power that undulated as wraiths with little inhibition as she worked through her hair, brushing eagerly through the mass in preparations to dry it. She would later don her face with blacks and golds, feathered out edges of cosmetics and smokey shadows, a halo of gold on the center, dramatic black lines sharpened with efficiency, and those fanning lashes spiked and curled and lifted upon the blue of her eyes. She highlighted gold upon the apex of her brow, cheeks, and later on delicate collar bones. She aggressively palmed her body to shimmer and glow, and when she turned to regard herself once more, she stood naked as a babe, but through the gloom of her aching heart, she shined.

She knew not what was happening to her; she knew not what this life held for her nor the truth from all the lies. The letters lay as they were, at her feet, wrought through with shimmering lines of hated crimson, and carefully, she stepped over them and regarded the silk lain across her bed, the uniform still left beside it, and the chains that glimmered through the sunset that poured into her room, bathing her in vermillion leagues of fire. Her phone vibrated across her desk, a subtle glow under the rays of light that reminded her to head toward the Myotis dorms, where she had agreed to get ready with the others.

And so she would gild herself as if for battle, for Amma Cahors would be nothing short of devastating.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

Two letters; two strings of fate, each in scarlet twine, each sobbed through with ebony malice, each woven delicately through the fringes of destiny unknown and eternally bound. Each failed promise spun from penmanship done thoroughly and scripted so elegantly that she could decipher the intentions lain through every scrawl of ink and illustrated signature that summoned her daughter’s name. The name she had given, the name whispered through time, the name that spun sorrow through the eyes of the almighty and everything that Charlotte Cahors could see. The galaxies that collided and churned away through bidden lashes, the eyes of All, the eyes of many that fell upon her likeness undone. Ebony hair and bright gaze stricken with the fate of a creature both born of life and death and the delicate touches of her father– a name she muttered into the night, forsaken and without, a name that loomed before her and summoned their child of love promised and yet lost.

But–

She had never told him that she was with child, she never uttered of the conception, never gave word to even when she was born in the first touches of winter. Though little surprise colored her facade as she received the letter, only a few days after the one she had received from Jonas, each so carefully crafted; the promises of a better life, a means to see the power within contained, controlled, conformed to the betterment of a child that would know nothing but pain for the terrifying manifest within. Charlotte would look upon these letters for days on end, as red bloomed and sparked and suspended over the innocence curled next to her time and time again, as she held her breath and allowed the name of the man she loved to sway her final decision in the end. When she gave Amma over to those waiting embraces of life undone, knowing not what loomed beyond those doors, unaware of the cruelties calculated and placed and already decided for the child that heralded the eyes of the world’s end.

Life for Charlotte Cahors would be a journey through the underworld and back, her eyes fated to weep blood for All she had seen and could not stop. To the family she had once reached out to, the name Baxter so carefully ruined by the machinations of man and the eternal vexation to be as mortals struggling to obtain the ultimate mantle known as God. Immortality was spent through leagues of dread, suspended through the sunken chasm of the unknown that accompanied the life of Cahors as a shroud of death.

She would only know, maybe some months later, what true hell was decided for her there; the artful words Jonas had spun, to speak of the future and then not, to be forever damned as a man so many steps ahead and detached from reality; unable to save even himself. Charlotte would spend years trying to get her daughter back, the things she would do, to try and save her.

Only for it to have never meant anything at all.

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_{Location: Campus Grounds - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University.}

Dance Monkey #4.032: atlantic.

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_{Interaction(s): -}

Previously: The Price of Mercy.

The ferry ride had been easy, anticlimatic at best, Haven stayed by her side and though apprehension feathered through her and she looked over her shoulder at every turn, Amma remained close by, similar tension that coiled through her entire frame even as she browsed through a myriad of colors and fabrics and palmed through the racks with little care to the final selection. Her earlier encounter with Sierra played over in her mind, her eyes drifting towards Harper every so often. She didn’t spare much thought to the dance before, as Amma had been determined to not attend, every moment of its mention having been met with a careless shrug and a lackadaisical commitment. Memory served it being brought up at the beach, where Harper had approached her with Katja and Gil, and here she stilled, fingers delicate and threaded through chiffon and silk, she could’ve sworn someone had asked her, a hazed affair through her thoughts and the shadow of memories betwixt her ears as she then caressed through sleeves of nylon and ventured further into the store.

Gil hadn't asked her, and she did not return the favor in kind. To inquire such, with the promise spoken of seeing him later, prompted answers to things that they were not prepared to acknowledge. Amma found that it was enough but the heated breath and the flush that sired through her bones rekindled the perplexities she discovered in his kiss; the calm she had found, the disassembly of the projected creature that was she - forever intertwined with the meaning of ruin and despair. The advocate for pain and rage traded under the moonlight for a girl who just wanted to love and be loved in return.

Just like her mother, perhaps, her memory gone thick and hazed and donned in a veil as if a maiden. The haunted figure of her dreams, laden through silver glass shattered at the corners that bled through with oozing black, her likeness cast upon a shell of a woman that clutched two letters betwixt her trembling hands drenched and stained in dried blood the color of rust.
Amma’s expression descends onto melancholy, tinged in retreating delicacies of wistfulness and confusion as she traces the ebony lines of a dress tucked somewhere in the back, an obsidian color adorned in silks, a daring and dramatic number assembled carefully from what she observed as she pulled it down and allowed the fabric to pool over her scarred arms; it would push boundaries. It would sire madness. It would compel caressing gazes.

It seemed almost normal, perhaps a bit mundane, to purchase a dress for a dance, something so simple and yet an accomplishment as she gathered her selection and walked up to Haven, letting it drape against her form.

“What do you think?”

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Do you ever wonder, what could have been?
Had Charlotte not given you to them?
Do you ever wonder, what you could be capable of?
If you had gone, stayed, if you had just been.

She did.
And now she knew.

She had come back to her dorm to shower after shopping, only to find the letters and her old uniform laid out on her bed, mere objects to some, but sacred artifacts of her past left undone through the shackles of broken memories. She was sure she had put them away, but now they remained there, calling to her, tempting, and with trembling hands she set her things aside and studied the bindings of lace and chains, the gossamer fabric that used to glide across her skin, the mesh and fortified lining that clung to every cleft and curve of her body. She glanced from it to her dress, and finally to her closet where an assortment of muted yellow danced across the eternal black of her wardrobe; the damned wolverine poised in a shield, a branding she had always mocked. Never knowing what it meant, but still, she wore it, and why? She doesn’t have the answer, not as the letters beckon to her, their own inquires poised to maim and rend her asunder. Her humanity balanced there, on a precipice of no return, where the beast lay and a little girl beside it, both wrapped in fated strings of red.

She tore those seals open with little thought or reflection, seals she realized had been opened countless times and then sealed anew, as if in an attempt to conceal the sins of those responsible. The contents of each letter spin a delicate tale, a lie, the forgeries in each that promise her a better life, a better world, a world maybe that did not hold breath on the chaotic whims of her powerful nature. P.R.C.U and The Foundation both beckoned and clamored for the power, the potential, that was Amma Cahors.

Jonas. He knew of her. Saw her. He knew of her fate. Did that mean he tried to save her? Did that mean somewhere, deep within, her mother knew?

And then she sees it: the next letter, where a name has been scratched out, ran through so many times she cannot make ends meet of the intended embossed there under swatches of black. It’s all redacted information; answers to things she has longed for, now bitterly denied.

Dear, Charlotte, my love –

“No.” She seethes.

It takes a mere thought, only a single spooling of it, that single thread of red that forges from her shattering heart, her breath that punches out in a sobbing gasp. The line of scarlet attaches to the letters, shaking, she was shaking, her entire body shook as hated power threaded through delicate sheets of paper and forged her anger and her rage down the middle of each.

I know it has been some years, and I’ve been trying to get back to you –

“NO!”

The letters she cannot destroy, but she could mark them. Yes, she could defile them, just as someone had already done. Amma drops them at her feet and allows them to lay as they are, lines of red spin through the words that had sealed her fate so many years ago. Black ink bleeding into fragments of her power marked to the scrawling of empty words she could never unsee.

I know about her, our daughter, I know they will try to convince you that she is better off with them.

To think, she really could have been saved. To think, she didn’t have to suffer. To think she didn’t have to pay the price. She could’ve lived.

The campus is not safe. It is compromised. I know I could only tell you so much, about The Alexandria Foundation –

She turns, and there her dress lays, wrapped, pristine, a pool of ink and soft silks that she is undeserving of; to think, she really could have just been as she was: a girl.

But you cannot trust Jonas, I implore you to send her to me. I’ll help her with her powers, I know you are afraid. However, she will be safe with me because I'm her father, and I can help her.

If only her mother had chosen differently.

I promise, I will allow nothing bad to happen to her.

All the power in the world, to find her mother, to find her father, only for it to turn to ash in her hands.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: Campus Grounds - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University.}

Dance Monkey #4.031: The Price of Mercy.

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_{Interaction(s): sierra. - @Qia}

Previously: rosemary & pecking order.

Leaving the Lnyx House was different from when she had arrived. She had been greeted in much the same silence, impenetrable beyond the intensity of her glare, but there was a faint whisper, a name she knew and a name she had spun in a similar whisper deepened by passion and desire. Speculation was found there in the utterances, the gazes that flicked up and down, those that fell upon her and her mussed hair before she quickly wove it into a plait over her shoulder upon her exit. The way they stared and spoke, Amma is quickly reminded of a night not unlike the circumstances found here, with her chin held high and her gaze unwavering in the coming day. When she returned from the forest clearing: met with hate, distrust, and figures ready to stand against the display of power she had given when her name had been traded through the night; the challenges marked then and there. There was none to stand in her way now, but the hushed speculations followed her still, and she could not help but compare Lorcán to Gil in that instance. The former was so deeply disturbed by the trailing gossip, and the latter possibly accustomed to such conjectures, but would he be bothered by such mindless musings with her name attached? Infamy cantered eagerly after her likeness, bisected by the reputation she adhered to on her first year here, the shedding of the defiler liken to a snake amid a sacred garden. She was aware of Gil’s star-born history, but the depth and wealth of such was lost upon her. Amma had never seen any of his films and knew nothing of his past just as he was unaware of most of hers.

Well, some of it, perhaps. The Trials had exposed fragments that she had kept hidden, but not all had been revealed. For that, she is glad, grateful even, because if they found out – if Blackjack knew of all that she had done. She wonders if Haven would try so hard to understand her. She wonders if Katja would have agreed to be her friend. She wonders if Aurora would still deny that she was a monster. She wonders if Lorcán would still claim that there was nothing ugly about her.

She wonders if Gil would ever touch her again.

Amma stills, close to the Gulo dorms, gaze cast upon the path before her as eyes follow after her figure donned in the touches of daylight. It does not take much to put two and two together and the resulting additions leave her contemplative until her phone suddenly demands her attention with a vibrating call. She carefully studies the number, the one she knows but never had saved, the same one that had rang her the night before Gil had needed her (she still marvels at that, to be needed) the same number that called her every so often over a time she cannot place. Amma hovers over the notion to accept it before it rolls over to her inbox, a sigh feathered from her tender pout before a familiar presence washes over her. The world reigned to her ebb and flow, the first churning whorls of scarlet looping thrice around her wrists as she turned, regarding the shade of red hair not unlike the crimson manifest that feathers at her lashes and hums away betwixt flesh and bone.

She doesn’t say anything, not for a while until Amma regards Sierra Baxter fully, and with phone in hand, she almost laughs:

“How’d you get here?”

Sierra’s smile is faint, more of a flicker that vanishes before it has a chance to form fully. She feels the corners of her lips twitch, a brief rebellion against the stoic mask she usually wears. The daylight filters through the trees, casting dappled shadows on the path near the Gulo dorms, and she steps lightly, almost as if she’s part of the shadows they provide. “You left the door open,” she says, her voice soft but carrying a hint of amusement, as if she’s teasing Amma for not noticing her approach.

Sierra steps closer, each step bringing her into the soft glow of the sun, her shadow stretching long behind her. Her gaze flicks to Amma’s phone, the screen still lit with the missed call, a silent indication of the unanswered connection. She meets Amma’s eyes again, the spark of frustration in her chest flaring briefly, a familiar feeling that she masks with the same teasing tone from before. “Maybe if you answered your damn phone once in a while, you’d know when someone’s coming,” she says, her voice carrying a blend of exasperation and light….affection. Trust that she rarely gives, a fragile bond garnered over time, now woven into the fabric of their interactions.

“Yes, well,” Amma’s voice lapses off into a wistful sort of reproach done in the finest touches of camaraderie, a delicate grin that slid through her lips, edged into a bite of something feral and more true to the nature of the insatiable woman lain within. “I’ve been busy.”

It was an understatement to the true severity of what they had all endured, to what she had been subjected to herself, a shadow of the pain each member of Blackjack had been forced unto with little consent afforded. So much had happened in so little time, and here stood the epicenter of her latest demise, the one she had spared, the one she was punished for in the final leagues of Hell before H.E.L.P had finally gotten her out. A reason, a purpose, she still did not know; a role she still had to play, a role she still adhered to even in the spun discoveries of her doubt. Amma could proffer many excuses as to why she had been ignoring her calls, but Sierra would likely see through them all, a trait given to all Baxter women that could glean the nature of everyone around them, even if they could not look into themselves in the same light.

“Not so much as how you got here, but maybe I should be asking why. Have you seen Harper yet? Does she know you’re here?”

“Yeah, I actually just left her,”Sierra says, her voice carrying a casual nonchalance. She waves her hands about, the gesture dismissive, as if brushing away the significance of the situation. The slightly cool air whispers against the skin not covered by her jacket, and she feels a slight chill, but it doesn’t deter her. “She had some kind of movie night with Aurora yesterday,” she adds, her tone light, almost playful, as if the mention of such an event is the most mundane thing in the world. Which, given the setting and recent occurrences within it, it is.

“She’s always had this weird way of coping with things so…kinda had to be here for more than just you, I’m afraid,” Sierra continues, her voice dropping slightly, the casual tone giving way to something more serious. It’s a confession, a frustration, she dare not voice to her sister but feels comfortable saying aloud here. She figures Amma would understand, a part of their prior agreement being to look out for the little rat, to begin with.

“Which is such a shame. I do enjoy our little tête-à-têtes.”

“How quaint,” Amma muses, kinship easily found there, a sort of luxury she realizes cannot be afforded to many of them. Perhaps though it was just the same, despite all that had been undone, the two found time to entertain the normalcies of life and friendship, the simplicity of it carries through her eyes, a similar glint discovered as she rolled her weight away from one leg and onto the other. Arms crossed and head canted down, Amma’s eyes spun away from the casualness carried through their exchange, the looming reveal of their intertwined past carefully coming to light.

“Harper is…” Her admissions feather off into nothing, the past year has not proffered much to her, their exchanges little to none, her observations carefully done through the fringes of conversation and interactions kept at a distance. Amma does not bring up what had nearly occurred to her after the trials, where she had attempted to lay blame at her feet, to spin the connection between the two sisters that loosely bound her to them. “She’s trying.”

“As anyone can, as everyone is.” It’s not so much defending her, or Blackjack, as she is unaware of what Harper had undergone, as she is unsure of what many saw during the trials and all that it had exposed. She knows partially of what it had revealed for Haven, Gil, and Aurora too. Amma doesn’t want to think of what it had left vulnerable within herself, the humanity shattered that slowly formed into a shell of a girl thought lost and forsaken.

“It has been maybe a year though. Things are happening here now that have happened once before. Do you know anything of the name Dae– “ She almost can’t say it, it chokes through her chest, punctures through her lungs, shatters through the rungs of her ribs, and rings suddenly through her ears where darkness threatens to descend. Amma clutches at her head, nails against her temple and lashes fluttering against the onslaught of unbidden terror that catches her breath.

“I don’t know. I just –” She lances her scarred fingers through her hair, tugs back through the chaotically compiled braid, and sighs. “I can’t remember. Someone was kidnapped, we saved her, but I don’t know if it’s connected to anything. I know people went missing once before, and it’s likely happening again.”

As Amma speaks about Harper, Sierra senses the hidden meaning of the other woman’s struggle and hesitation, each word carrying a burden that’s almost palpable. She reads the unspoken pain and fatigue in her words, the way her voice falters slightly, betraying the brave front she tries to maintain. It’s clear she’s been through a lot, more than she’s willing to admit out loud. That much Sierra had figured out when they’d first met and along the way, piecing together the fragments that make up the guarded person called Amma. The raven-haired woman is trying to put on a brave face, but there’s something more there, something she’s not saying.

But does Sierra care enough to try and find out? She hasn’t even asked Harper about her experience, after all. Or about any of the events that may have led to hazel eyes turning to white, grasping at the air around her in ugly desperation to find her way. The guilt sits heavy in her chest, a weight she’s not sure how to lift, and it makes her wonder if she’s been too detached, too wrapped up in her own world to notice the pain of those around her.

Or, at least, the pain of the only person that truly matters to her anymore.

The redhead tilts her head to the side, brown eyes regarding the equally pained figure before her. She studies Amma’s face, searching for any sign of what she’s feeling, any clue to the turmoil beneath the surface. “Dae?” she questions aloud, the word slipping from her lips almost unconsciously but in a softness that’s foreign to her voice. Her offering of a fragile olive branch comes in the form of an outstretched hand, one that pauses in its motion with the other’s last couple of words.

“Kidnapped? Here?” Sierra says, shaking her head. Her disbelief lingers in the air, her hand still hesitantly outstretched, caught between offering comfort and pulling back. She eventually drops it slowly, the guilt—her stray companion in the moment—tightening its grip on her chest. She can see the raw emotion in Amma’s face, the kind of pain that’s all too familiar. What kind of mess have you gotten yourself into this time, Harper? Because the redhead is certain that her trouble magnet is involved somehow.

“There is - was maybe, I don’t know now - someone here.” Amma carefully shakes out the remnants of her powers bound through her wrists, linking into pale scars aligned there, the sluggish crawl of scarlet threads cresting over each shoulder before it plummets down her spine and bids to the earth below. “Someone, who I think is responsible for the things I can’t remember. Responsible for…” She carries off into a whisper before all goes silent, the world stills and a breeze carries through the black tresses spilled over her shoulder, lifts them as if gestures dancing through her mane of hair before her eyes snap and pin Sierra to where she stood. There, it happens again, that single line of crimson that shimmers through her gaze ringed around her pupil as a sliver of hellfire unbound, unnamed, and unchecked.

“You found something. That’s why you’re here. Harper may have called you, but…” Amma takes a step forward, it had not gone unnoticed that she had reached out to her, another hand to mark in her waking world, within and without, to the many faces that strayed through her life undone. “What did you find, Sierra?”

Sierra’s gaze shifts to the pocket of her jean jacket, feeling the weight of the letters pressing against her like a physical burden. She pulls them out with deliberate slowness, each movement measured and careful, as if the letters might shatter if handled too roughly. The letters are still sealed, their edges crisp and untouched. The only certainty Sierra has about them is their author and who it is meant for. They represent a key to understanding the past—a bridge to the secrets buried deep within their intertwined histories. As she holds them, the gravity of what they might reveal presses on her, a potential to unravel the mysteries that have haunted both her and, she imagines, Amma for so long.

“These,” Sierra begins, her voice steadier now, “might be the answers you’ve been looking for.” She extends the letters towards Amma, her hand shaking slightly as she does so. “They were sent to your mother before...well, you know what,” she continues, her gaze dropping briefly in reflection, the memories of that time flooding back before she forces herself to look up again. “And could be connected to what’s happening now.”

She doesn’t want them. Her body refuses. Every delicacy of calm and grace she had obtained that morning suddenly spooled away on a phantom gale of unforeseen fate and circumstance, the weighted reality of those letters so carefully proffered to her as sacred relics of a past heralded within and without. Amma doesn’t want them.

No, but she needs them.

“She was right then.” The Beloved that was her, the could-have-been had she not been given to The Foundation, though, she had to wonder if it even mattered; for they had come for her still. The arm revealed that was lain with scars much like her own –

Maybe you should ask our father.

“I remember her sometimes, though it’s all unclear. I remember her often just sitting there, staring off into space.” Amma whispers, reaching forward, the trembling in her hands through every splayed finger as she reaches for the letters, the weight of their delicate bindings profoundly felt as she takes them from Sierra and holds each in her hands. The scars on her palms suddenly burn and it takes everything she is, and every ounce of control she can spare, to not destroy them and the contents within. She wants to ask how she obtained them, she wants to ask if she had any other leads, she almost doesn’t want to know, for she cannot help but wonder if it would matter in the end. If Charlotte was ever found…

“The Foundation is here, on the island, if they find out that you’re here too, I don’t think I can spin it again to get you out alive.”

Staring off into space, huh? Is that where you came in…mom? The image Amma’s words depict is a painful one—a reminder of the way she once watched her own mother, Anna, stare off into the void. It was as if Anna had been trying to decipher the mysteries of the world or, perhaps, the secrets from her research she could never share. Sierra remembers the countless nights spent in silent observation, wanting to pry into that very intelligent mind, to understand the thoughts that kept her mother so in her own head at times. The memory stirs a deep ache within her, a longing for answers that never came, and she wonders if Amma feels the same way now, caught in the web of unspoken questions and elusive truths.

Sierra’s shrug is meant to be dismissive, a casual gesture to mask the emotion welling up inside her. She tries to play it off, to make it seem like she’s unaffected, but the tightness in her throat betrays her. The way her heart clenches at the thought of what could have been different—if only she’d known more at the time, if only she’d been able to bridge that gap before it was too late—makes it hard to maintain the facade. Her mind races with the possibilities, the what-ifs that haunt her every thought. She swallows hard, forcing herself to push the emotions down, to keep them from spilling over, but the effort leaves her feeling raw and exposed.

It is a good thing for the both of them that facades have never been her thing, anyway. At least when not in a practical sense.

“I knew the risk in coming here and wouldn’t have if it wasn’t worth it. A deal’s a deal, right?” Sierra says then. As she watches Amma carefully holding the letters in those scarred hands of hers, a contemplative expression crosses her face.

“You know…it’s almost like it’s all come full circle. It’s like everything that’s happened has led us to this point.” Her tone is earnest here, each word chosen with care, as she pauses and then continues after a beat.
“I know we’ve reached the end of this particular arrangement, but if I come across anything more, which something tells me I will, I’ll make sure you get it. That’s my promise to you.”

“Perhaps,” Amma rejoins in a whisper, careful in her admissions, not wanting to burden Sierra with the truth: for the life she spared in her, and the punishment she endured for. The price she had to pay, the promises woven through her life; each formed into a chain link wed to her heart. They were two women bound and woven unto the falsehood of their mothers, unable to shake the fragments of half-truths and endless lies; never knowing where they began, never knowing where it would end. “Another test I failed: in being sent to kill you.” She glances down at the letters within her grasp. “I don’t know if what you’re looking for is related to what’s happening here but know that if I find your answers within my own, I will ensure it gets to you.”

“And our arrangement still stands, Sierra. She may not need it,” the girl who stood and looked upon her and the monster within, and refused to allow her friend to become just like her. “But I’ll keep an eye on Harper. That’s my promise to you.”

There’s a pause, a shared understanding passing between them, as Sierra absorbs Amma’s words, her demeanor shifting back to the determined, relentless woman she’s become over the years. The role she has played for some time now knowingly and without regret. She turns to leave, but before she does, she glances back at Amma, her voice softened by an undercurrent of genuine care.

“Whatever’s in there…don’t lose whatever you have of yourself to it. You’ve been through too much to turn into what the world wants you to be.”

And with that, Sierra walks away, her mind already spinning with the next steps demanded by her roles, both given and taken up.

She remains silent at that, watching as Sierra leaves, unable to still the quaking in her shoulders, the dappling of sunlight over her shoulders and hair suddenly a weight she struggles to bear, liken to the question that coils through her mind, beholden to her words: if only Amma she knew who - what - she was.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: The Lynx Dorms - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University.}

Dance Monkey #4.019: rosemary.

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_{Interaction(s): gil. - @Roman}

Previously: My Heart's A Ghost Limb Reaching.

He kissed her back and set her world ablaze.

It was a hesitant shift, something subtle and barely felt before he moved, her mouth yielding beneath him, lips slanted and breath in a whispering exhale of need that banked low within her core, threatening to overwhelm her center of gravity that pitched forward; helplessly drawn to him. Whatever it was that existed between them, that tension that threaded each in a fated string of red, it pulsated through Amma and Gil as he plied her lips apart on a deft movement and drank deep. Unable to restrain himself at that moment, drawn helplessly by the pull of something unknown that bound himself to her in a kiss that answered so many unspoken things, but sired even more questions about what they were.

Amma decides on the first sweep of his tongue that she doesn’t even really care and blissfully succumbs to the rhythm of his kiss, his name simmering on the precipice of a whisper whilst he threads his fingers through her braided hair, tilts her head back and captures every breath and sound she has to give.

It’s as far as they go, burning kisses and caressing tongues, something that stokes an endless and eternal fire suddenly lit betwixt their figures drawn close, but not quite meshed together. A line is drawn carefully then, a silent promise of potential that neither is prepared to cross, for even with the weight of labels flitting around them, neither can be bothered to acknowledge them beyond the comfort they find in each other, in that moment. They lock eyes, heated and heavy breaths fanned together and shared in soft pants of desire and there she smiles: something soft, delicate, and he smiles too and asks:

What’s your favorite color?

From there it’s light-hearted conversation, simplistic admissions of things they prefer, small musings of their studies, and a joke or two that Gil makes in an effort to get her to laugh. It’s a peculiar sensation, but laugh she does, tired eyes soon following, the blankets barely kept between them as they talk until Amma quiets and eventually falls asleep, a peaceful glow beholden to her figure as the shimmering tension falls away.

They never talk about their pasts.

For now, it is enough.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

There is no alarm to disturb her, there is no feigning sleep whilst he moves and goes about his day, there is no pressing need to leave before he even wakes; it is simply a slow draw of her lashes in the feathering glow of the day through his window where there are no nightmares or dreams to sift through on the warming touching of dawn. It is a void, a comfort of nothingness, to be as she is in the intimacy of sleep with her cheek pillowed on her arms, body curled inward, seeking solace and warmth in the middle of the night. His frame formed around her without touching though there was a delicate line where their fingers barely caressed and Amma studied what little space remained between them in that moment before she tacked her nails against the lines of his hand; the hand she had held, the hand that was tangled into the mass of her hair to undo her braid. Strands of black slid over the glimmer of her eyes as she studied his features next, lax and lulled into sleep before a glow not far behind him withdrew her studious gaze.

She had shed her jacket at some point in the night, leaving her phone on his bedside table that was lit with the receiving texts coming her way, Amma sat up carefully, mindful of Gil lying next to her, and rose to her knees, deftly reaching him over with her palm holding her weight aloft, shifting against the mattress as the blanket falls away from her figure. She hesitates, glancing down through her lashes before she retrieves her phone and sits back to study the series of numbers pinging away on her dimly lit screen. Some from House Gulo about the upcoming dance (oh, that’s right, she thinks, they were going to buy dresses before Haven’s kidnapping) and for once the group chat is silent - no impending deaths or missing members. For now, she almost scoffs at that. With her thumb she scrolls away the notifications until another text pings away, coming through with a slow tilt of her head, the number only recently saved: Haven.

It’s an invite for shopping, meeting up at the ferry, that also extends into getting ready at –

Amma’s gaze sharpens, blue hardening to ice floes lost unto a tumultuous sea, and for only a moment, a barely felt coil of pressure immediately thrums away through her arms. Aurora’s. A lingering question echoes away through her mind: did she know? She had saved Lorcán, and Aiden had been there to witness, but she had doubts the elder Roth would be inclined to share what had occurred, for there was no real explanation for what she had done. Even now, situated on Gil’s bed, fingers curled around her phone and the light casting a soft shade of blue to her features, she couldn’t even figure out where to begin in explaining such an occurrence. Much less how it had been done; for it was the eternal perplexity of her powers undone and all that she was capable of in terms of unfettered destruction that saw her to his bedside where she had to try something at least, even if it had amounted to nothing at all. The shaking in her hands begins anew and she is helpless against the quake through her multitude of scars, a simple confirmation sent towards Haven that she would be there- nothing more, nothing less before she drops her phone at the sensation of being watched.

Amma’s eyes pull away from her phone, meeting the steelish-azure of Gil’s observations deepened by the lingering draws of sleep, a tenderness that released all the emotional strain they heralded in their waking worlds. It’s the first time they have woken up together and it’s in that revelation that some would take for granted that Amma’s lingering stare softens, but there are no words to spare: no soft-spoken ‘good mornings’ or sweet nothings to exchange, there is only so much to offer and it breaks into uncharted territories that she cannot name or face.

“Hey,” she mutters quietly and tucks a few wayward strands of black behind her ears, head canted slowly to one side to study every line of his profile to note certain details and nuances to Gil that she would’ve never noticed before.

Gil rubs his eyes, pushing off the last of lingering sleep, and smiles.
“Hey.” He replies, his voice low and soft and rested. He sits up, sidling back to lean against the wall; the blanket slips from his torso and he folds his arms across his chest, bracing against the morning chill.
“You look pretty with bed-head,” he says, offering early-morning flirtation and hoping the ease of conversation from the night before hadn’t lifted with the morning sun like the darkness had.

For the first time in many years, Amma Cahors blushes, a quaint pinch of pink spreads across her pale face, pronounced by the sudden flash of brightness in her eyes. There's playfulness in his words, the simplicity in their shared musings washing over her once more and spun from her mouth in a delicate laugh: bell-like, graceful, almost flush with embarrassment as her eyes dance with the memory of the night before.

“So do you,” she quips back easily, voice quieted into a husk from disuse, and motions off-handedly with her phone before she sets it aside to work through her mass of hair, delicately working through the tangled tresses.

“I'm meeting the girls today.” Amma offers next as she shakes out her mass of hair that falls down her back. The movement is intimate, a vulnerability in fragments that Amma has never spared before but she finds refuge in the coming day that paints daylight across her gestures as she continues to work.

“I think-” Gil replies, leaning across Amma to fetch his own discarded phone from where it had bounced across the bed the night before and lodged itself down the side of the mattress, “I’m supposed to be meeting Lorcán and Rory as well.”
He sits back up, side-to-side with Amma again, and they take a long look at each other. Gil’s eyes trace her lips, and then slightly lower down, where the gathered blanket moves softly against her curves.

Gil sports his own blush as he clears his throat and returns his eyes to the screen. Mostly Rory, nothing from Lorcán, a text from Artie he ignores.
“I’m to head there, apparently. Both Canis and all that.”

Amma hums quietly in response, listening but distracted entirely by the sensation that coiled down her body from the weight of his stare on her lips; she thinks back to the way he had kissed her, the way he had melded against her and captured her breath in a heated whorl of tongue, and the way he simply looked at her now- she can’t decide who would eat who alive first.

But.

“Gil,” Amma whispers, tempting his eyes back to her, the question unspoken there, and with her face darkened further by the boldness of her next words, she says: “I want you to kiss me again.”

“Okay.” Gil says, quickly; the short syllables are still not short enough to avoid being cut off by the meeting of lips and hot breath. They push and pull against each other, morning sun cascading over their bodies, matching their caresses and wandering hands. Amma is everywhere; her scent invades Gil, her heat matching his and propelling both to new combined heights, the taste of her in his mouth. Something silver and metallic and electric sparks through Gil as he grips above her waist in one hand and her pelvis in the other - he can feel it in the back of his teeth before it streaks cold down his neck and sends a shiver through the course of his entire body.

Amma is lifted onto a new plane of simply being as she is, where the pain and rage is exchanged for this christening desire and need, it sluices away across her skin, scars emblazoned and betwixt flesh and bone silver tendrils pulse and coil and posture through her nerves and sends her blood singing: his name, taste, and touch the conductor that harmonizes beside the red that slides down every link of her arched spine.

Finally, they break; their breath is hot and hasty and heavy, the passion laden in it practically fogging in the morning air of the bedroom. Gil puts his forehead to hers again, keeping the connection point they’d forged the night before.

He takes a few deep breaths, and licks his lips, Amma lingering on his tongue, before he manages to speak.
“I think I need a cold shower.” He remarks, laughing at himself and his bad joke. “You’re welcome to stay, or you’re welcome to…”
He clears his throat.
“Well. You’re welcome.”

She feels something that flits across the chasm lain within her heart and soul, something that banks away into swirls and electric streaks of scarlet that bloom as fire in her veins. Amma tastes Gil in every quivering draw of breath that punches through her chest, her lashes panned down low in that moment as she smiles, a feral and edged grin that stalks across her face and lifts her bright eyes to his; forehead against forehead and her hands greedily woven through his hair, marveling at the feel of it.

“As tempting as that is,” Amma rejoins quietly, her fingers slipping from his hair to cradle against his neck then, feeling his pulse beneath her scarred palms. “I should get going.”

It takes a momentous effort for her to slide off the bed, a tremble through her body now hyper-sensitive and aware of him, but she manages with a delicate settling of her clothes into something proper, smoothing her blouse and shorts carefully before she reaches for her jacket and lazily pulls her arms through the sleeves. All the while she keeps her eyes fastened onto Gil, never once breaking her gaze. Amma reaches for her phone, leaning forward onto the bed where she moves in close to him once more and breathes a quiet, heated farewell against his mouth with a subtle wink.

“I'll see you later.”

Gil marvels in awed silence, enraptured by Amma’s subtle display, and nods slowly at the whispered promise. He watches her leave, sliding quietly through the gap in the doorway, and then - still, for some reason, bunching the blanket deliberately over his pelvis - makes for his bathroom.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: The Lynx Dorms - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University.}

Dance Monkey #4.011: My Heart's A Ghost Limb Reaching.

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_{Interaction(s):-}

Previously: it's so hard to be. & dread wolf.

The twilight hour is kind to her likeness, bathed in reds and eclipsing oranges with striking hues of violet that lance through the clouds above, her gaze pulled to the canvas heralded there as the figments of her past hazed in and out with the insistent ringing that came and went with her shuddering breath. Amma had loosely plaited her hair, still damp through some of the strands and donned a large black jacket hinted with muted ochre edges that signified House Gulo with a small shield and wolverine emblazoned there over her heart. She’d never even been to the Lynx building, not that it is difficult for her to locate with the structures being as close as they were, but even so she hesitated, rings twirled around her scarred fingers as she studied brick and sky and grass to better distract herself from the inevitability that someone would report that they had seen Amma Cahors looming yonder the doors as if a specter lost to the setting sun.

She asks herself if she cares.

It takes her maybe a minute to decide, every second spared with a sigh through her nasal and lips until the evening descends and the first herald of stars ignite the sky above, she enters House Lynx as if she owned the property with her glare locked ahead and braided hair tossed over her shoulder. Amma walks through the spacious common room without acknowledging those present before she pauses there, her head canted and that blue gaze sliding through her fanning lashes as she inquires aloud about Gil’s room. Silence rejoins her demands until someone answers in a whisper, gesturing above their heads that pulls a delicate simper from Amma’s full mouth, a blush and stutter her response before she disappears around the corner. Up a floor or two and another right until she hesitates, this time outside his dorm.

Before, she had entered his hospital room without so much as an announcement, had easily slid through the doors with little reservation that now fixed her to the spot with a hand poised to knock. Amma is a creature that does not hesitate, she knows this, and yet here she raps knuckles against wood, opposite gesture clenched around the doorknob, preparing to enter on her wants should he fail to answer.

He’s at the door quickly, not even pretending to distract himself from the wait after their brief call. His mind was a whirl, anxious and excited and wondering just what the hell he was thinking, with that call to this person, after sun-down and following such a volatile series of days. Gods, what must she think herself? What were her own expectations? What were his?

He opens the door. She announces herself with almost a whisper, her voice sliding through the minuscule crack as it yawns open just so, a sliver of darkness therein.

“Gil.”

“Amma.”

And he lets her in.

Striding into his room is surreal and unbeknownst to her, it crosses an unspoken boundary as she steps over that threshold easily, sliding by with little to no reservation with her eyes flickering to him in a brief assessment before flitting away. His dorm is similarly furnished to her own, perhaps inverted with facing a different way with the building’s structure, however, Amma is more curious about the personal touches and nuances of his room, if anything, to distract herself. For the hour is late and the cloak of night descends, the delicacy of the shadows meant entirely for them.

For whatever this was.

Standing in the middle of his room, she smooths her plaited hair over her shoulder and turns about to regard him entirely, she realizes that they have not spoken since the first night they spent together, where she offered comfort in sleep and nothing more, his text that followed thereafter and the following night where she joined him and then left before he awoke. The events that followed twisted through her mind, so much that had happened in so little time. Her head slowly falls to one side, studying him through her dropped lashes before she says:

“I assume you’ve heard about what happened with Haven,” her breath flutters out in a sigh, edged in something she cannot place. “And Lorcán.”

Gil pauses a little too long before responding, standing by the window and watching the shadowed lights - half silver-moon, half lamplight-white - play dappled over Amma’s figure. Her hands, delicate and graceful, play with her hair.

He held his phone up between thumb and forefinger, shaking it back and forth.
“I’ve been kept informed, yeah.” He said, sure that Amma had been audience to the very same texts and frantic messages he had. He tossed the phone to his side where it bounced across his mattress. “I can’t parse everything that’s happened. Keeps happening. Seems every new corner is another strike against us.”

Even in the waning twilight dark, he knew he looked tired. He could feel the bags under his eyes and the buzzing behind them.
“I haven’t slept better since the Trials than when I’ve slept beside you. I didn’t…don’t want to presume. But whatever this is, it’s not just me, is it?”

She could feign ignorance, she could deny and flutter her fingers one by one to dismiss the tension that, even now, coiled betwixt them, she could laugh and spell it to a passing fancy and nothing more. Her mind falls back to the words Aurora championed through her own despair, and the warmth and ease Haven and Rory found themselves in the gardens; Amma has always been wanted, she was the unexpected, the always desired.

She’s never been needed though, and that in itself means something. Right?

“No,” she begins slowly, twisting the ends of her braid around her index finger, tugging and pulling to still the trembling in her hands. “It’s… not just you.” The words are a struggle to reveal, but she manages just the same, lashes fluttering within silver-lined shadows at the admission; she feels emboldened under the fall of the night and takes a step closer.

“Is that why I’m here, Gil?”

A sense of relief washes over him - the tension of a hanging question unraveling with the provision of an answer. A good answer, no less. But it led to new territory - it was out in the open now, an agreement of something undefined but undeniably present. The weight of labels began to settle in around them. It was easy in the infirmary - silent shared slumber. Out here, it threatened to become real, and if it was real, it required tending to. Why was she here?

He sat down on the edge of the bed, looking up at Amma, her frame seeming to tower over him.
“I…don’t know. I could ask you the same. You’re here because I asked and because you said yes. I asked because you’re the only one who can pull me out of my own head. Why did you say yes?”

“Maybe it’s the same.” She muses aloud, looking down at him through a curtain of wayward black strands and lashes, a glow bidden to her gaze that falls as she moves, not quite coming closer but shifting her weight away from her ankle, free from its brace.

“I almost didn’t answer, I still don’t know if I should have. There is so much -” Amma pauses, voice lost to a brief trill of laughter that comes away almost lost and without, unbidden but free nonetheless. “So much that keeps happening. Maybe it’s just that simple; we don’t know.”

“Both so caught up in our heads we can’t figure out where to begin.” She delicately taps against her temple before her hand drops, the quaking of her palms and fingers caressed against the scar at her chest that steadily hums beneath her gestures.

“With each other.”Gil said after a pause. “We can’t go on forever as…moonlight bedfellows, and unspoken tension. We figure this out and maybe we get our heads straight in the sunlight, too.”

Amma supposed it was accurate, though she refused to utter so aloud, the utterance of ‘we’ so simplistic, it bore a weighted acknowledgment to what lingered there on the edges of moonlight. Instead, she closed the distance from where she stood and sat down next to him on the edge of the bed, shoulder to shoulder as they had been a few nights ago. He had asked her here to drag him from the depths of his tumultuous thoughts, and hers were no less spun through with leagues of chaos and unknown emotions; things she may have felt years ago but had long since perished under the might of life undone. How the others made it look so easy, so natural, is lost upon her but her body turned into his almost naturally, angled in such a way she could almost decipher the uncertainty banked there in his steel-blue gaze.

Her hands tremble, as they have off and on for hours now, but she knows this: her touch was one of reaping destruction and pain, but they had also saved others and she remembers holding his hand through the night before the rising sun had chased her away as if a dream. Here she recalls words spoken to her. To mend. Instead of sunder. Could she? And if so, where could she even begin? Inquires looping through her mind on repeat over and over again -

Amma carefully reaches forward, hesitating, fingers arched and with a softness bidden over her features, she takes ahold of Gil’s hand and liken to that night, she enmeshes her fingers with his entirely and holds there; the cogs of her mind blissfully stilled.

Gil doesn’t say anything; he accepts Amma’s touch, and a slight chuckle escapes him. Amma only offers a raised eyebrow, missing the humour of the moment, and Gil can only say:
“I didn’t expect you to be so warm.”

His foggy mind clears but his heart rate spikes; he breathes her in, smelling the faint clove cigarettes, and the night air still lingering in her hair, and the remnants of perfume about her neck. He leans forward, and ever-so-gently, their foreheads touch, and Gil closes his eyes, just feeling her rising breaths against his.

Amma has never known peace; would not even be able to recognize the freedom of it, so dissociated from the concept that it takes her a moment to simply be. Deep down, she is, as she once was: a girl, no more, no less. One that had been cast alone in the dark for too long, one that had shed away innocence to herald the creature of rage within, to protect the frailties of her heart and soul spent and broken. A flush, sudden and perplexing, immediately coils away through her lithe frame, her breath drops, and deepens, and the shimmering veil of intensity that often eclipses her suddenly spools away into nothing. Her eyes close and the trembling in her hands spells away with it on the flutter of her lashes, with their foreheads touching and their hands entwined, Amma leans into Gil, lulled by the moment, the world silent and beholden to her grace for once. She doesn’t know how she even manages to move closer, but she does and a shuddering breath falls from her lips at that moment, her touch against his tightening just a fraction that ignites a shiver up the length of her arm.

They lock eyes, their breath mingling, circling around them and in and out of a shared pair of lungs.

“Hey there, supernova.”

“Hey there, casanova.”

The words are easy, no longer burdened by uncertainty, unknowing where they originate, but it all phases away into the backdrop with the weight of his eyes locked onto her- the way he looks at her stirs a heat, a fire lain dormant within as if eternally shimmering coals of yearning that immediately seize her. Amma studies the planes of his face, flickering up and side to side before descending onto his mouth leaning in close to her:

If you know what you want, reach out and take it.

Words given by the man before her, words that flitted through her mind, words that spun purpose through her body as she did just that. Amma compelled herself to be selfish much like the creature she was, she closed that distance between them with a shuddering breath and caressed her lips against his own, eyes falling shut on the sensation that dipped away into nothing the moment she kissed Gil.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: The Gulo Dorms - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University.}

Dance Monkey #4.006: dread wolf.

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_{Interaction(s): &&}

Previously: the undone. & rare birds.

Amma Cahors is tired.

It goes beyond the leagues of physical fatigue and ventures into the unknown chasm of a hungering void reminiscent of a famished creature, a well of yearning that situates betwixt flesh and bone and weighted her body liken to stone. Rigid and unyielding and rapt with obsidian inlays of that once resolute willpower that personified the woman of cruelty many assumed her to be. The unknown, the in-between, the All that was Made, the –

– who was she? What was she?

Was she Amma, was she Tiamat, was she Ammar —-
Was she The Foundation, The Dragon, The Beloved

Was she the advocate for the depraved and the unhinged.
Was she rage, pain.
Was she –

Did Amma ever exist, whoever it was that gazed on back through silver and glass with eyes of the void wrought with crystalline blue and power that clung to her dilated pupils constricted in a hellish ring of scarlet. Liken to twine, chains maybe, that defiled her glare the more she looked on with darkened circles blemished upon the hollows of her eyes. The return to the Gulo Dorms had been met with silence and trepidation, heralded by the figure as she that loomed through the doors. Her chin lifted and eyes narrowed, a dominating impression, the mystery that often shrouded her likeness now lesser by the realization that Amma could be wounded, hurt– that she was indeed, human.

Did that now make her a student of P.R.C.U, was she a true member of Blackjack? Did she deserve to be? Did she want to be?

Her mind wonders, gestures knotting through damp locks of ebony that twisted over raised ink and scars. No matter the answers to her inquiries, she would always be one thing above all: a monster. And though the world had enough to reign true in the nightmares of their reality, she remained as one of a forsaken beast that had nowhere to call home. Neither here on the island, nor there among pyramids in an ocean so tranquil and deceiving, and though she may return there (she pauses then, fingers stilled before the shaking begins anew) it did not mean she would be welcomed back or even belong. If she ever did. Suppose she could ever be free. She made it no secret how she felt in the last year, refusing to entertain conversation and better acclimated herself to remain garbed in shadow and distrust, playing well into the role she had to perform and adhere to. A once ensured sanction of purpose that now gave pause and hesitation to the finality of her words whenever spoken aloud. She smooths her thumb against the pout of her lip, swollen still with her bite, a bruise of violet christened to the pink of her full mouth from where the fear of the dark unknown had almost seen her undone.

The last few hours at the infirmary had been taxing upon her mortal frailties and mental constitution, her emotional aptitude fairing even less as she considered the name unspoken, the name that heralded more power over her spirit than all the epitaphs carved onto the wall of obsidian fortified to her heart and soul. He knew her mother. He knew Charlotte Cahors and somewhere within she yearned for the answers a child of barely ten had been asking for the last ten years and more: where did she go? And above all else: why? Deeper still than those fated inquires too she wondered if she had the will, the constitution, to receive those answers. Would any of it matter? The past would remain as it was: ill-bound and fated to the cruelty of many this world yearned for, the power of humanity spent and lost to the depravity of man’s ever-persistent inclination to pillage the different; the misunderstood; and not being as they should.

She dropped her towel, left bare and vulnerable, water clung to her modesty heavily endowed in scars and ink, and palmed over the crisscrossing of pale, silvered malice wrought through her flesh and heralded with the likeness of a netherworld she was owed. With a held breath Amma returned to the adjacent bedroom, gaze immediately snapped and drawn to the bouquet that sat upon the edge of her academic desk where books and papers were aligned, beset with spiral-bound notebooks and a plethora of miscellaneous objects afforded to a student.

Earlier in the day she awoke and waited for her discharge paperwork, but there had been something off in the first encroaches of dawn, pale light chased by the peculiar sensation that she had missed something vital, her room awash in the dregs of her powers that sparked and fizzled out on the cusp of her fretted emotions then and there. The delicate effect of Aiden Roth’s gratitude weighted through her body and the realization and lingering toils of emotion that came to when she had saved Lorcán’s life. Death then, the reaper more so, had come to her that fated hour and wrent asunder her nightmarish world, to exact the toll stolen from their influence in illustrations of fiendish black that shattered through her body. A creature she knew naught of that screamed and shrieked at the beast within that bellowed with the might of life undone, fissures that formed unto blue eyes of her likeness beset on a face of perfect nihilism that roared in defiance and possessive qualms to the life that she had saved; again.

Not for the first time, and not for the last. The many lives she spared and saved and touched, and barely there were words of gratitude spun from one who affected her more than most, but refused to even meet her gaze. Even so, Blackjack (well, maybe only some, she thinks) would dub her the malicious and be done with it. To become nothing like her, as one had sworn.

Would they know; would they care?

But then she had noticed the flowers, their arrangement is done with purpose albeit with an amateur’s grace by the uneven heights of many different blooms. Their presence gave her pause and Amma wondered who would’ve visited her in the night, coming to her after the realizations of her own heart, and thus she reached forward –

Only for her powers to respond immediately, arcs of red shearing through the ebony petals of a rose, eyes rounded and lifted in surprise as words slithered against her mind:

Objective.
Mission.
A different breed.
A task; a challenge.

Oh, Amma. Tiamat. You’ve done it. We’ve done it. A prize possession. I’ve found it now- through you, I will finally — there is so much we can do.

So now, let us begin.

She had balked, the shaking in her hands beginning, and for hours they would not stop, they would quake and even in the garden beyond where she had basked in the sun with a winged girl who now understood her and the horrors endured, they would continue to tremble. Her hands would shake for a time unseen and unknown, the world beholden to the delicacy of Amma Cahors’ fear.

Oh, what beautiful flowers! We’ll make sure they get back to your dorm with your things, now before you go, we just want to…

The arrangement stood there as a representative of something unnamed, but she could not ignore the spooling words through her mind eternal, words she had heard in another place, another time that now swept through her tenfold as she studied each blossom and pondered their meaning. Whispered words undone through the dead of night as she trembled with the exhaustion of her powers shuddering through every link of bone and nerve.

And it was there the ringing began, something unseen that began small, a slowly building crescendo of a delicate, peeling sound before it crested ever higher with that dreaded noise. Betwixt her ears it lanced back and forth and to and fro, a hollow resonation and a droning echo that speared through her lobe with a terrifying sunder of darkness eternal and shadows without. Amma sunk nails through her tangled hair and scoured over her scalp to cease the noises toiling through her shattering mind, a silent scream peeling through her lips as the ringing continued evermore. It rose and then fell, a wave of sharp and intense sound as images flitted on through her mind’s eye, the third and all-seeing globe bisected with black and red– of shadow and blood and phosphorescent blue. Numbers ran by there, names and labels and metal in chains that looped over her body, brought her to her knees almost as fated blooms of scarlet power summoned themselves upon the stillness of the world beholden to her sudden weaknesses.

Helpless to her rage and pain, helpless against the creature within that would seek the revenge owed to her. Helpless to her might that shimmered in crimson cords that snapped and pulled and linked through her flesh as a cage of powerful intention. Splayed gestures fell over the glow of her eyes, peering through the fringes of her shaking hands as she pulled in shuddering breaths and speared nails against her temples to reign in the loose confines of her control.

Control, she pleaded, control. Even still as the ringing climbed higher and higher, accompanied by the buzzing of something else and the slithering trio of serpents she could still feel bunched over her skin. As if still bound and knotted over her shoulders to flick black tongues against her skin to feed upon her agony. That now clamored with want to feast upon the lingering figments of death and poison she had destroyed the night before to save the life of another. Her palms still recalled the sensations of her power sluicing through his body and the heat of his manifest banked and stifled before it answered to the callings of life. Her arms still bore the weight of power as she descended into the hated dark and the gates of hell that was nothing more than a shattered door and depths beyond a room she could not enter. Her past was shackled and bound as she was with a sliver of pain that vibrated down her entire body and wound her spine tight in tumultuous ache. Skeletal links through her back, the scars emblazoned anew as weariness swept through her and listed through her steps as she finally peeled her eyes away from the flowers and dressed on repetitive motions. Black on black, cotton materials and white accents lined through the shorts she donned, small comforts afforded to be without roommates to complicate her musings as she worked through her mass of damp hair.

Her phone rings, vibrating across her desk. She ignores it, just as she has ignored the others, the texts illuminated back and forth, the news revealed of Haven’s rescue and Lorcán’s recovery. Amma knows these because she had been there, but even so, reading them had done something to her and she had wanted nothing more than just to sleep. At that, she recalls the one text she could not bring herself to answer but had confirmed her return to his bedside, no words to be spared because she simply had none to give. The soothing of her erratic mind, placating her demons alongside his own, melding into one another in simplistic comfort and understanding. He had admitted things to her, and she to him, but Amma could not fathom the complexity of admitting more than what ailed her upon the surface of her soul. Muted thoughts and feelings, she contemplated, allowing her ebonette strands to dry unbound. Her phone rings again, and still she does not answer, but this time she looks at least, to screen her persistent caller.

And there, she freezes. A number unsaved but one that had called her many nights ago on the beach, where the start of all of this had begun and where she allowed herself to forget. If only for a moment.

It rings again. And again. And again.
Missed calls stacking up and up and up.

Her phone skitters in place and she slams her palm over the glass of it, lines of red wrought through the surface of her desk as it vibrates against her palm; demanding to be heard, demanding to be seen. Demanding to be answered as it rang again and again.

Amma’s fingers curl in and surround the fortified casing, intending to shatter it entirely, to destroy this simple and damning connection until it finally rings once more, and the name illuminated there in the descending sun that casts her room aglow in striking lines of vermillion, the herald of twilight where she wavered for a few seconds, debating on the answer.

Before it falls to her inbox (that she has not set up) she accepts the call with a whisper, his name spun from her mouth in a perplexed utterance, laced heavily with anticipation and punctuated by her breath.

“Gil?”

The following timbre that sweeps through her is damning in the implications they had chosen to ignore, the comforts spared in the ward now slowly bleeding out onto something more. His uncertainty gives her pause, if only for a moment before she sighs, a wealth of sound edging into soft breaths before she whispers a single word that could potentially seal her fate unknown:

“Okay.”

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

_{Location: The Sub-Basement - Pacific Royal Collegiate & University.}

Take On Me #3.063: the undone.

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_{Interaction(s): the fist & jim. - @Lord Wraith}

Previously: survival.

First Katja, then Rory, and then Harper next. Amma witnessed as they braved the unknown, tendrils of ivy mocking at her presence as it meshed and wove over crumbled brick and forgotten remains. A breeze swept through the tumble of curls tossed over her spine, smoothed against the planes of her back where a sphere of unholy terror bunched and swelled, feathering anxiety through her limbs and corded through her belly that seized at the turmoil of the dark lain before her. She could not catch her breath, harsh as it was through her nasal with every attempt to breathe, the weight fell to her chest an excruciating pressure that cinched her throat and pinged through her ribs with trembling exhales as panic maliciously held her fast and immobile. Her lips parted around a choked sound that fell away into nothing, stolen by the exclamations coming from the corridor that taunted her, not unlike the simulation that had shown her the truth of all that she could have been and was not, the oppressed halls and the depths of Hell where she reigned true.

Amma may not have been a stranger to pain, but horror, the minute and silent kind that sheered through her body as frigid claws of a lamented creature of dread, was an entirely new concept she could scarcely even begin to decipher.

That sphere of influence she commanded swelled with the awareness of others, figments of sounds and pinging eyes that swept down her spine wound tight and bound. Chains of fears, chains of the past that writhed against her as demented vipers of the hated dark she refused to venture into. Electric fragments of red slid through every splayed gesture, nails arched through the fabric of reality, threatening to maim at the dominating presence looming through the shadows of forgotten, overgrown shrubbery. Scarlet coils manifested upon the fringes of the world beholden to her hesitating fears, risen high over her lithesome shoulders as she said:

“Who is there.” Not a question, but a demand, one drenched in a silver glow that fell through her glare.

The steady hum of the motorcycle was the first to answer Amma's question, her eyes drawn to the gleaming black vehicle before it came to a sudden halt. Its rider dismounted in one smooth motion, his helmet retracting within his collar as the long coat he wore splayed behind him in the September breeze. His eyes locked onto her own, meeting briefly, holding as they each studied the other. Colour drained from his face as he looked upon the girl he knew so much about but had yet to see. Amma wore the face of a ghost, the past embodied in her form.

"Charl-"

Thundering hooves broke the moment and colour rapidly reappeared in Shiv's face before he turned to greet Jim who quickly jumped to the ground before approaching Amma.

"Cahors, did you open that door?"

Was that – No. No. Amma’s eyes rounded out, the crimson powers churning away at her palms immediately snuffed out into plumes of obsidian smog that slid betwixt her lungs with the sharp inhale that whistled over the pout of her lip. Taint writhed through the chasm of her heart, sired by the name unspoken, the first curl of an annunciation that would’ve shattered her world stalled by the arrival of Jim. If it had been anyone else, she might’ve had more to say- to demand. To finish that name that listed through her hellish memories as both god and the ultimate betrayer.

“I - no.” She uttered, regarding them both with a shuddered breath. “Katja did… Harper and Rory are in there with her. We followed a trail here.”

Her glare of blue once more landed on the first arrival: the man on the bike whom she did not know, but familiarity still bloomed there, his likeness spoken to her once whilst in attendance at The Foundation.

“Haven was kidnapped.”

"Haven too?" Jim replied looking towards Shiv, "Boy, ain't y'all just fine and dandy for bringing your screwed pooch over to my island."

"Then we must hurry, though if the building is compromised Daedalus would have already fled. Pray your student is both still inside and alive."

"Amma," Jim turned back to the girl, "I can push the water back and give us a fighting chance, but can you ease the process by destroying it?"

"You'll need to ensure you don't take any thing along with the water," Shiv added, his keen eyes looking down the narrow corridor. "That building is one misfire away from being gone completely along with those inside."

“Yes…” Amma answered, a peculiar haze filtered over her gaze, a sheen of silver courtesy of her powers now posturing over her arms, careless whorls of scarlet that threaded down ridges of scars and raised ink. Betwixt her ears there laid a voice, a terrible and guttural fury that sheered against her mind, fixated labels and darling phrases to her temple, dug deep into the recesses of memory gone shadowed and dead and forlorn. A name that pinged away through the wall of obsidian and scoured thick lines against the fortress of her soul, spelling out the herald of all her pain and her rage, a cruel sire that haunted her dreams now given new life.

Daedalus.

Her entire body seized on a phantom tremor, unease spindling out onto the ground in fissures of red that she struggled to contain, the world at her reckoning trembling with the influx of her power unbidden and yet foretold. Amma carefully sunk her nails into her awaiting palms, her only method for control, knowing not what that name meant to her, but knowing it nonetheless as an eternal reaper through her life undone. Within and without, she pleaded and turned at the approach of others, noting Calliope and Banjo next that stumbled upon the scene. She spared them little acknowledgment, fixating the intensity of her gaze back onto the dark, unable to vocalize so much as a demand or response before she finally stepped into the corridor- mindless of the screaming child within long thought dead that cried and wept as she vanished into the shadows.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

She tells herself that she’s fine, that she doesn’t care. She tells herself that she’s okay- over and over and over again. She convinces herself long enough to at least make way further within, erratic pulses of red danced over her lithe frame in tandem to her heart with that ebb and flow that struggles to maintain the composure she’s fighting for. The walls are groaning, breathing, a tomb that she is willingly wading into, down and down, that oppressed feeling crushing her ribs and puncturing her lungs over and over again. Her breath comes out in quick gasps that tumbled over the pout of her lip impaled by a ridge of bone, so hard she tasted copper on her tongue and welcomed the distraction of pain with it. She can hear the others, but dare not call out, wary of the screams that bunched and wedded to the confines of her chest that rose and fell on shuddering exhales. The water touches her first and Amma is taken back to the endless depths of the ocean that pulsated beyond slivers of glass and sterile panels. They dragged her down into the dark so often that she knew the way through every line of her heart and soul, down and down.

Downdowndowndown –

– down within the confines of the ocean, no one can hear you scream.

I’ll lock you down here so they can’t find you.
So they can’t have you.
You said yes, you gave yourself to me.
You can’t take it back.

This cannot be undone.

The water rushes ever higher and for a split second Amma contemplates surrendering herself to the depths below, if only to silence that voice in her head. The roars, the wails, the eternal bellows of esoteric nightmares and fiendish replicas of what lay dormant and hidden within. The monster that swore vengeance and demanded it be paid in blood.

And death.

“Amma!” His voice cleaves through her mind, enough to sunder her from her awakening panic, eyes gone wide, lashes fluttering in the dark as the structure quakes and lists to the side. Concrete fell, chunks of it plummeting into the rising waters that stole warmth from her entire body, it felt like ice floes in her veins, chips of death that threatened to drag her under as metal snapped, groaned, the entire structure weighted under the rushing waters that surged and parted around her hips. It pulled against her entire frame, pushing her farther back until she braced her weight forward, her ankle protested against the adjustment, tender still in its brace, but Amma pushed through it. She would not be undone, no matter how encompassing and overwhelming her fears.

Violet energy spun through the spring water, the power immense as it was suddenly forced and manipulated back, a shield of psionic capacity that did as commanded and pressed the water farther away until walls of frothing depths shimmering in purple hues yielded around them. Amma carefully glanced back towards Jim, the other man who she could only acknowledge as The Fist, and yonder where Calliope and Banjo made up the end of their group, her eyes carefully swept over each of them as Jim came up at her side, a subtle nod all that was spared as the building shuddered and quaked once more. Katja and Harper were somewhere up ahead, Rory too and Haven somewhere lost within the confines as this freshly marked hell that had lurked below for a time unknown.

“Stay back.” Amma advised with a commanding ease, knowing time was not in their favor, not as the entire structure groaned, as if wary of her approach as she strides forward and suddenly fell to her knees, palms upon the ground and nails against the concrete as sudden swells of scarlet manifest razed through the world on a roar of power. A droning resonation shattered through metal and the fortifications that blocked some of their way, a radius of thirty-three feet all that could be spared until she stood and walked forward, palms thrust out to carry the angry tendrils of scarlet that snapped and struck and wrent through the violet barriers holding the waters at bay. She surrendered it all into the void at her eternal beck and call, the feathering lines of silver that slid through her lashes and alighted her eyes, the barriers falling away as she thrust out her arms and willed her might to reap and destroy. Amma commanded and manipulated the depths to vaporize, waves shuddering and hissing with her hellish manipulation, slowly whisked away into nothing, molecules all for naught and helpless and yielded to the nihilism of her waking world. She walked through the corridors, into the depths of her own hell, Jim mindful at her side as he continued to spell out violet barriers to maintain her path of destruction until they caught up with Katja and Harper, a door splintered and cracked that too fell away at the mercy of her power that wrought through the wood and willed it into nothing.

She knew it would not last long as she gasped and turned her splayed gestures into fists, immediately sundering that connection to the world that wailed at her manifest. Amma nearly fell, the amount of HZEs toiled about her person abundant and tangible, pulsating black and crimson in her wake as she struggled to breathe. An opening had been made, one of limited means, but one none the less that cost her precious resources, all of her time spent healing affording her just enough ability to allow them to finally reach Haven- if she still lived.

“Hurry...” She bid them, gaze aglow in silver and blue, locked ahead and within as shadows amalgamated and swarmed through her vision, tendrils of black that speared through her mind that suddenly screamed. An unknown barrier that prevented her from going any further into the dark unknown, memories lain there that would have wrought her spirit asunder- a block. One carefully constructed so that she may never venture unto the hell of her true past. Amma’s lashes fluttered, a seizing tremble that shook her lithe body until she suddenly fell back, lids shuttered over the veil of her intense eyes as she suddenly fainted with a final swirl of scarlet energy that shot off into the darkness as the entire building shook once more.

Shiv’s arms came around her immediately, catching the body of Amma Cahors as she fell, the might of her power undone spent through the traumatic experiences he knew she had endured for so long. He lifted and held her with ease, unable to shake the phantoms of the past that illuminated her face with the likeness of a woman that haunted him to this day.